Don’t worry, developers—Apple CEO Tim Cook says that you can have your gaming consoles and living room TVs all to yourselves. Even though many industry veterans have suspected (and feared) that Apple’s huge strides in the gaming market may lead to the tech giant developing their own video game console, they’re doing just fine with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod.

In a sit-down interview at the “D: All Things Digital” conference earlier this week, Cook fielded a huge number of questions touching on everything from tablets replacing PCs to how he dealt with his grief after Steve Jobs’ death. Unsurprisingly, the conversation eventually turned specifically to gaming, and whether or not Apple had any plans to pull a “Microsoft” and launch their own entertainment console.

As Cook simply noted, gaming has evolved past simple, “traditional” concepts like the console box and controller, although he’s not ruling out Apple eventually getting into their gaming content on bigger screens like everyone else:

We’re in gaming now. One of the prime reasons buy an iPod touch is gaming. I realize that’s not the big screen that you’re talking about, but gaming has evolved a bit. You have more people playing games on portable devices than on the big screen TV now, so where we might go in the future, you know, we’ll see. But this is an area where customers love games, we want to do things that customers want us to do. I’m not interested in being in the console business, “traditional” gaming. But if you view gaming more broadly than that, then I feel we are a pretty big player today and the things we do in the future will only make that bigger.

With all the success that the iPad and iPhone have had, it’s hard to imagine that Apple even needs to go into console development. That is, unless they decided to buy out a company like Nintendo or Valve and have a satellite side of the business—devoted to console gaming, but separate from the Apple umbrella.

About EGM Staff

Apple CEO Tim Cook Not Interested In Lame, Unevolved Consoles

Don’t worry, developers—Apple CEO Tim Cook says that you can have your gaming consoles and living room TVs all to yourselves. Even though many industry veterans have suspected (and feared) that Apple’s huge strides in the gaming market may lead to the tech giant developing their own video game console, they’re doing just fine with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod.

In a sit-down interview at the “D: All Things Digital” conference earlier this week, Cook fielded a huge number of questions touching on everything from tablets replacing PCs to how he dealt with his grief after Steve Jobs’ death. Unsurprisingly, the conversation eventually turned specifically to gaming, and whether or not Apple had any plans to pull a “Microsoft” and launch their own entertainment console.

As Cook simply noted, gaming has evolved past simple, “traditional” concepts like the console box and controller, although he’s not ruling out Apple eventually getting into their gaming content on bigger screens like everyone else:

We’re in gaming now. One of the prime reasons buy an iPod touch is gaming. I realize that’s not the big screen that you’re talking about, but gaming has evolved a bit. You have more people playing games on portable devices than on the big screen TV now, so where we might go in the future, you know, we’ll see. But this is an area where customers love games, we want to do things that customers want us to do. I’m not interested in being in the console business, “traditional” gaming. But if you view gaming more broadly than that, then I feel we are a pretty big player today and the things we do in the future will only make that bigger.

With all the success that the iPad and iPhone have had, it’s hard to imagine that Apple even needs to go into console development. That is, unless they decided to buy out a company like Nintendo or Valve and have a satellite side of the business—devoted to console gaming, but separate from the Apple umbrella.